


Lapse

by wreathed



Category: British Comedy RPF
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Kissing, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Smoking, Television
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-05
Updated: 2010-05-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:36:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: Charlie smoking. In a sexy way. Please? (If you could make David Mitchell absolutely disgusted by it/how much it turns him on I will give you my first born.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lapse

The episode’s been recorded, the promotional photographs taken, and all but the last of the audience have left the studio. David’s standing next to his team’s desk and staring into middle distance, his usual short post-show _I think that went pretty well, except-_ conversation with Lee having just ended, until he’s surprised by hot breath against his neck and a dark voice in his ear.

“Outside,” Charlie murmurs from right behind him.

David nearly shivers, nearly breathes in too sharp, nearly lets his eyes fall closed; instead, his shoulders tense and he turns around, paces back, to face Charlie from a foot away.

“Why?” he asks, his throat still a little dry, his mind still a little distracted. He’s been staring at Charlie for the past three hours – so, so stupid, too often wondering _what if?_ instead of _truth or lie?_.

“Cigarette. I’m dying for one.”

“You’ve started smoking again? You stupid bastard.”

“I’ll give it up again in a few weeks,” Charlie says, almost petulantly, promising something he so often has before. “Just need it for a bit. Been working a little too much, maybe. You know what it’s like.”

David raises one eyebrow.

“Could do with some company, though.”

“Fine,” David sighs. “Only the one, though. I’m not going to watch you puff your way through the entire pack, Brooker.”

“Just the one. Fear not, _Mitchell_ , you’ll still get home in time to be tucked up in bed with a mug of hot Horlicks by eleven.”

As they leave the set together, David can feel the eyes of lingering members of the audience, carefully watching.

*

They grab their coats and leave through a door near the dressing rooms. It’s dark outside by now, but not too chilly, and the ugly breezeblocks form an alcove that’s sheltered from the gentle breeze. Charlie leans up against the wall as David’s polished shoes scrape too loudly across the tarmac. Away from camera, Pinewood’s like anywhere else: covered in chewed chewing-gum and discarded ends of cigarettes smoked, grey.

David coughs. “Good show.”

“I guess so. I didn’t say that much. You were hilarious, as per bloody usual.”

“Shut up. Flattery doesn’t suit you.”

“‘s true, though.” Looking away from David and down, Charlie rummages around in the pocket of his black overcoat. The stretch of his neck reveals a flash of pale skin between his hairline and the collar of his coat. It’s oddly distracting.

Charlie finds what he’s looking for, and pulls out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. David’s watched other people go through this before, so many times, always feeling that swoop of regret and relief that the ritual will never be one he’ll make his own. He’s a social smoker, not an addict. And there’s no control to be found in addiction, sure, but there was always something captivatingly ordered about the way the seasoned smokers in his life – Rob, of course, and plenty of his other university friends, and an ex girlfriend who must have been on thirty a day – began each smoke: take out their cigarette, put it to their lips, take out their lighter, click, click, click, light, drag, inhale, exhale, sigh.

David’s never seen Charlie smoke before. He feels something dark flutter deep inside him as he watches Charlie’s fingers trip over the usual motions. Charlie’s hands are shaking slightly with guilt, or need, or cold, and he’s still looking down at the ground on his first exhale. It makes him look secretive, ashamed.

When Charlie finally turns towards David, his face and frame are lined hard and dark in the low light, and smoke is pale against his lips. It’s as if some haunting, beautiful daguerreotype’s staring at David right in the eyes.

Charlie looks nowhere else after that moment, just watches David watching him.

 _This is something that’s **killing** him_ , the logical part of David’s brain is screaming at him. It should be in his interest to attempt to get Charlie to stop doing it immediately. And yet David _would_ stay here for as long as it takes Charlie to make his way through the packet, as it happens, as long as he could carry on watching the way Charlie mouth wrapped around the stick, the way he held his fingers so carefully, the way his eyes sometimes closed when breathing in. Too late to pretend innocence; he hates himself and his traitorous mind, his treacherous body as the first feelings of arousal begin to curl within him.

“Want one?” Charlie asks David suddenly.

“No,” David says. “No, I don’t feel like one very often these days. I’m fine.”

“Are you alright? You’re not saying much.”

“Fine,” says David again, still managing not to wrench his gaze away. “You really, really should give up soon, you know.”

There is a pause. “Would you still want to look at me like that if I did?”

David swallows. “I thought you hadn’t noticed.”

After taking a final drag, Charlie casually stubs out his cigarette. “I noticed. I thought I must have read things wrong, mind, but I noticed.” No longer with anything to occupy his hands, Charlie is gesticulating nervously in mid-air. David, shocked, finds that he wants to pin those unsure hands against the wall.

Charlie gets there first. Two paces and David’s shoved against the other side of the alcove, Charlie’s face inches away from his.

“We said we’d never do this again,” David gasps, finding it progressively more difficult to think coherently as Charlie’s body presses against his own. “We agreed that it was stupid, so stupid-”

“I think,” Charlie says, leaning in further, “I haven’t got the willpower to be give up two things at once. And seeing as you don’t have any horrifying photos of diseased lungs attached to you, I’d better start with the smoking.”

David tilts upwards and their mouths finally meet, slide together clumsily. David’s teeth catch on Charlie’s bottom lip and Charlie moans and kisses David again, David’s hands hands grasping desperately at Charlie’s hair.

“Must be nearly eleven by now,” Charlie says breathily, briefly breaking away from David gently sucking on his tongue. “No bed in sight.”

“I don’t think that matters,” David manages to reply before they once again resume.

Charlie tastes sour with the tang of tobacco and David can’t help but compare it to when Charlie just tasted of Charlie: clean, dangerous, his. His again now, David hopes, more than just another lapse, and no more poison.


End file.
